Unlike Kodak, I’m Not Dead Yet

I know it looks like the blog has been abandoned, but it hasn’t! Things have been quiet on the site from a lack of time and motivation. When I had articles I wanted to write (and there have been many), I didn’t have the time. When I had free evenings (but there haven’t been many), I didn’t have the motivation.

In years past, I never suffered the motivation problem. The reason for this change is that I feel defeated.

They’ve won.

Not yet and not completely, but it looks inevitable. The fundie/Republican merger has been such an effective pairing that it has created an unstoppable force. It’s an amazing synergy of complementary goals. The fundies are anti-intellectual, and the Republicans are anti-education. The fundies want society to regress socially to the Dark Ages, and the Republicans want society to regress economically to feudalism.

I have been exploring variations of this blog’s traditional approach to our subject matter to keep my interest going. You might have noticed a broadening of topics I’ve covered lately (e.g. straight politics, more off-topic posts). I expect to keep the blog going. I need it. It’s how I blow off steam. It keeps me off of the tower.

There’s hope for me, but not America. I am film; I am here to stay. America is Kodak; it’s shutting its doors due to self-inflicted wounds.

5 Responses to “Unlike Kodak, I’m Not Dead Yet”

Yes I know your feelings. It seems hopeless as the fundie/repucks engine steams along thru various states and the stupid blossoms. The main hope you should have is that the more THEY push the more you can see that we are having an actual impact and their feudal empire may just collapse.

It actually isn’t the election that bothers me. It’s the restructuring of society that already they’ve pulled off, primarily in economics and civil liberties, that bothers me the most.

As far as this blog goes, I will still focus on covering important issues that we need to stay vigilant on. It’s just that previously I felt like we were in the majority and had to defend rights from those who were trying to steal them. Now I feel like we’re in occupied France with the Vichy government.

The 60’s and early 70’s, as undisciplined as they were, were our last opportunity to hope that humanity might actually wake up from ten millennia of somnolence. Civil rights, the counterculture, the burgeoning consciousness movement – then it all just went away. Shortly afterward, Reagan got in, and we’ve been enmeshed in an obscene corporate/fundie menage ever since.

Ron is right – and it applies not merely to America, but to humanity as a whole. I think we’re just about done.

I understand completely. I even get a solid double dose of it. I’m a dual citizen of the US and Australia, living in Australia. My vote and views are literally uncounted in America except in an absolute worst case scenario (Bush V Gore almost counted expats. Almost.)

We had an election here in Queensland a little over a week ago, and the conservative parties swept the board. It is distressing and humiliating. I know a lot of it is incompetence in the Labor party leadership, leading a lot of centrist people to vote ‘not-Labor’ but it was still pretty ugly on the social conservative side. We literally had ads trying to out-anti-gay each other, and as a transgender lesbian, it has been outright terrifying at times. In no small part because, over all, I considered the area to be quite GLBT-friendly. Heck, Brisbane covered most of my transition, aside from my actual SRS, through a government run gender clinic! Hardly hardline conservative!

If only there were some way to help people understand that the GOP only represents corporate interests. It does not matter to them if Americans buy goods made in Asian sweatshops or Asians buy goods made in American sweatshops. They do not care if their R & D staff come from the Ukraine, Korea, or the US. It doesn’t affect the bottom line, therefore they have no reason to invest in a educated populace here, when they can get the relatively small numbers of technologically adept employees they need from overseas.